Calabacitas is a traditional New Mexico early fall dish of summer squashes, corn, and green chile. However, you’ll find several variation, some with tomatoes and others cheese. Frequently, you find Calabacitas as a fall special in New Mexican restaurants. The basic calabacitas recipe is SO easy and quite tasty.

A couple of weeks ago I had one medium sized yellow squash from the garden sitting all by itself in the crisper, a pot of green chile sauce sitting on the stove top, two dozen corn tortillas in the fridge, and a freezer packed with bags of fresh corn. Throw all that together with some cheese and what do you have – Calabacitas enchiladas. I decided to make them stacked or flat as opposed to rolled, because they are easier to assemble and much easier to get out of the pan. Not only that, I do prefer flat enchiladas to rolled – don’t ask me why, but I do.

Calabacitas Enchiladas

You can shorten the prep time by making the green chile ahead of time (up to 3 days) or using a store bought green chile sauce.

"*" See Kitchen Notes for more information or links to special ingredients.

Course:
Main Course, Vegetarian

Cuisine:
New Mexico, Southwestern

Yields: 6servings

Recipe Author: MJ of MJ's Kitchen

Ingredients

1Tbsp.canola oil

1medium onion,chopped fine

2garlic cloves,minced

1cupcorn

1yellow squash,grated (at least 2 cups)

1/8tsp.salt

1 to 2dozen corn tortillas or flour tortillas -See Assembly

2 to 3cupsgreen chile sauce*

3cupsgrated cheese(mix of cheddar and Monterey Jack)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350° F (177 °C)

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat.

Add the onion and garlic and sauté for 5 minutes until soft.

Add the corn and cook for 1 minute. Remove from heat.

Add the squash and salt. Stir to combine all of the ingredients.

Pour the chile sauce into a pie pan. (You're going to dip your tortillas in the chile sauce.)

Assembly

Depending on the size of the serving dish, you can make 2 to 3 layers, so make that decision ahead of time. My standard enchilada dish (8" x 12" casserole) works nicely with 3 slightly overlapping corn tortillas for each layer; therefore, I make a 3 layer enchilada casserole with this recipe. Starting and ending with a layer of corn tortillas, I use 15 tortillas. The vegetable mixture is divided into 3 parts and the cheese into 4.

Spray a casserole dish with oil. Spread “a little” of chile sauce on the bottom of the dish. I do this to keep the tortillas from sticking to the bottom.

Dip 3 corn tortillas (depending on size of pan) in the chile sauce and place, overlapping, across the bottom of the casserole dish. Top with about ½ cup of cheese, then 1/3 of the vegetable mixture, ending with about ½ cup green chile sauce.

Dip another 3 tortillas in the chile sauce and make another layer with cheese, vegetables and chile sauce.

Create a third layer of cheese, vegetables, and chile sauce. Top this layer with the last 3 tortillas, the remaining chile sauce (or as much as you want), and then the last of the cheese.

Place in the oven and cook for 25 to 30 minutes, until cheese has browned and the sides are bubbling.

Kitchen Notes

Flour vs. Corn tortillas - Corn tortillas yield a lighter enchilada, but both are excellent! Dipping the tortillas in the sauce helps to incorporate the sauce throughout the dish and also prevents the tortillas from drying out during the cooking process.

Green Chile Sauce - You could use store bought Green chile enchilada sauce or make your own sauce from fresh, canned or frozen roasted green chiles. The amount of green chile sauce you use for each layer depends on how hot the chile sauce is and how hot you want the final dish. If the chile is really hot, I use about ½ cup of sauce for each layer and my chile sauce is usually pretty hot.

Calabacitas is Spanish for “little squashes”. For my calabacitas I do try to find the smaller summer squashes, but for these calabacitas enchiladas, you can use one of the squashes that got hidden and a little too large for stirfry.

If you enjoy these calabacitas enchiladas the here are some other calabacitas recipes you might enjoy:

WOW! Thank you for such a wonderful recipe
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I’m insanely bummed that my local restaurants don’t serve anything like this even in the fall! ahhhh but thanks to you I can make it at home! <3 I pinned this beauty to pinterest for later! thanks love! =)

ps: your comment made my night! i was having such a awful day today. you rock!

I will love to have a serving of this right now….
Perfect symphony of flavors…
I love layering in food as they bring such a awesome texture and flavors to each bite…
Love the recipe and the way you explain it seems so easy.

Actually, I’ve been asked that question a lot lately. One of the things I’m going to be trying very soon is to make a green chile sauce with a mix of roasted green and red bell peppers. They have no heat, but the combination of their flavors should make a nice sauce. The enchiladas do need a sauce of some type, so maybe using bell peppers is a possibility. I really don’t see why it wouldn’t work. Thanks for your comments!

If the spicy level is tone down for kids and me, we’d love this squash enchiladas! I’m sure it’s not the same without spice…but maybe mild one might be okay. Love the color of this enchiladas. Thanks for introducing new kind of enchiladas!

I don’t see why acorn squash wouldn’t work. In fact, roasted acorn squash might be quite interesting. You could under-roast it to make it a little easier to grate or chop up for the filling. If you try it, let me know how it turns out.

This looks really interesting, never tried this before. would like to try making this one day. with homemade green chilli sauce of course, i’ve never seen green chilli sauce in the supermarket here in Malaysia..

[…] to believe that it was two years ago when I first talked about calabacitas and introduced you to my Calabacitas Enchiladas. As much as I make calabacitas in one form or another, I’m surprised I don’t have […]

[…] to stick to her recipe as much as possible, I think it is best to send you to MJ’s site for the calabacitas enchiladas and green chile sauce recipes. Please check out all of her other great chile recipes while you […]

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